There's a film that has been going viral and causing all kinds of excited conversation, a whole lot of it so skewed as to make truth an obsolete idea. It's called "Between the Suns" and deals with the situation taking place in Beit Shemesh in Israel. I'm providing the link below and adding a warning that this film can cause nausea and violent headaches, among the mildest symptoms.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFm1tZkEuxI&feature=share
Grown men, daring to call themselves religious, have, among other heinous acts, been spitting on little girls and calling them whores and prostitutes, all because they attend a school for girls that is too modern for these monsters and dares to be across the street from a community they live in (if one can say that such disturbed individuals are actually alive in a human sense).
The whole film is disturbing, but among the worst of the words spoken is the man who insisted "I am a healthy man." Healthy?! It is healthy to attack little girls because they dare go to school--a religious school--in a school that does not meet this man's perverted standards? Healthy to call a 7-year-old a whore? Healthy to declare that their women know their place and keep to it, no matter what God may have decided? Healthy to hurl sexual epithets at a six-year-old?
Someone in Israel, a whole lot of someones, needs to come down hard on the lunatics in Beit Shemesh. Where are the rabbonim of the community they live in, and where are their words of condemnation? Where are the municipal leaders, whose job is to keep all citizens of the city safe from attack? Where are the voices, hundreds and thousands of voices, raised in righteous indignation that disturbed and violent men are allowed to prey on innocent children?
Among other things, we will be judged on how well we protected the weakest and most innocent among us, and when we let such madmen attack our innocent children, then just who are we?!
3 comments:
It's a good bet that the loonies have no use for rabbinic leaders and even terrorize them.
"The whole film is disturbing, but among the worst of the words spoken is the man who insisted "I am a healthy man.""
i don't want to make you even disgusted, but i think you may have misunderstood this. he says זה מפריע לי, אני איש בריא
"this bothers me, i'm a healthy man"
which as i undersood it is as if he is saying he is a man and has needs and desires. he can't help himself.
i could be wrong (someone please correct me) and this man is merely a sicko and not a perverted sicko who is turned on by 8-year-old girls in knee-length skirts and long sleeves.
Abba - I think that's an accurate interpretation. Which takes this nonsense to an even scarier level.
As I see it, the problem doesn't solely reside with these lunatics. It's the behavior of more "mainstream" chareidim that lead to unacceptably extreme and even criminal behavior. First it starts with the disappearance of women as an entire gender from publications such Yated Ne'eman. Then it morphs into dictates on how a woman should walk (arms should not swing; nothing should move but the legs). Then it migrates into criticism about sheitels vs. tichels. Then it snowballs into a lack of family seating in restaurants, events and even homes. Then it's separate hours for grocery shopping. Separate seating on buses. And then, it becomes assur for a mother or daughter to stand next to a kever during a levaya (I kid. You. Not.) And then why should we be surprised that it's natural, logical progression is separate sidewalks and harassment of children? These circles have created monsters -- they didn't emerge spontaneously from a vacuum.
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